Choosers of the Slain Read online

  Dmitri Devlich, his team second, was just finished zipping his boots as Oleg stepped into the squad bay. The rest of the team was mostly on its feet, putting on their boots and jackets, as the recording continued.

  "Battle this day for honor and the Keldara! Be true to your comrades and warriors born!"

  Oleg handed Dmitri the sheets detailing each man's load-out and mission. The sheets were arranged in the same pattern as the squad bay, so all Dmitri had to do was go down the length of the bay handing them out. Each sheet had a picture of the individual squad member, the weapon and ammunition load they were to draw, a list of materials they were to carry and a general mission order including the paragraph Gildana had written about the current enemy conditions.

  As soon as Oleg had passed off the sheets he read the section detailing his responsibilities and walked back to his room. He pulled out the correct map-set, checked to make sure it was actually the right one and started buttoning his uniform tunic while rereading the mission orders.

  As he was rereading, Givi Kulcyanov came in the room, buckling on his gear and carrying Oleg's in his arms.

  "Simple mission," the radio telephone operator said, handing Oleg his body armor and combat vest. Givi was a cousin rather than a brother as the name would imply but they had known each other their whole lives.

  "We don't know if this is the only group of Chechens in the area," Oleg pointed out. "And we don't know what will be waiting for us in the trucks. It might be simple and it might be very hard indeed."

  "You're always a pessimist," Givi said, grinning.

  "I'm always a realist," Oleg replied, throwing his armor over his head and buckling it on. "That's why I'm the team leader."

  When he got to the squad bay most of the team had moved down to the armory to draw their weapons. Their prepacked rucksacks were by the door and as each man drew his weapons for the mission they added them to the load, moving out the door to the waiting vehicles.

  Oleg drew an SPR and a .45 caliber silenced pistol, checking each, then slipping in a magazine. Last he put the weapons on safe and picked up his ruck, heading for the door.

  Dmitri was by the door as he went out, checking each weapon to see that no one had loaded a live round, yet, and that all weapons were on safe.

  "You're the last out," Dmitri said.

  "Load it," Oleg replied, heading for his vehicle. "Givi, call in that we're loaded and preparing to roll. Then give them roll time."

  "Roger," Givi said.

  "I make it as seven minutes, more or less," Dmitri said, climbing in the passenger side of his Expedition. His would be the last vehicle out of the compound. Oleg would be in vehicle three of the five. The lead vehicle traveled well forward of the convoy as a point in case of ambush.

  "Agreed," Oleg said, getting in his own vehicle. "Let's roll."

  * * *

  Mike crouched by the side of the trail as the team passed. He was both pleased and pissed that not one of them noticed him. He'd intended to close from the rear and call in before contacting the team but had accidentally gotten ahead of them. He was pleased that he hadn't lost the ability to be virtually invisible in the brush and that nobody had reacted to the figure by the side of the trail by fragging him. On the other hand, he was pissed that the Keldara, and even McKenzie, had just walked right past him. If he'd been an enemy they'd be in a world of hurt.

  Part of the reason they hadn't noticed him, he had to admit, was his camouflage. From the first he'd determined that the Keldara would have only the best equipment and he'd paid through the nose for it. The camouflage uniform, in particular, had been costly. There was an Italian firm that produced digi-cam, digitally enhanced camouflage, in virtually any pattern. The first uniforms he'd ordered had been standard digi-cam, U.S. military issue. But they hadn't, in his opinion, been perfect for the local terrain. The U.S. digi-cam was designed to blend the wearer in any condition from city to mountain to desert. It wasn't "dialed" for pure mountain/forest conditions.

  The Italian firm had sent him several sets of digi-cam in various shades and patterns until he found one that he liked. Then he'd outfitted the Keldara in that. It had been expensive as hell, though. Besides the custom camouflage pattern, the fabric was comfortable, conformable and fire resistant. Each uniform cost about three times that of a standard U.S. digi-cam uniform, but he figured it was worth it. The Keldara were limited in number and were his primary outer defense. Besides, they were friends.

  He let the last member of the team, who was correctly checking his back trail, pass by and then stepped out onto the trail. When the Keldara's back was turned, he crouched and let out a slight "psst."

  The Keldara spun in place, raising his SPR to his shoulder and crouching to sweep behind him.

  Mike, who was within arm's reach, simply grabbed the barrel of the weapon and yanked it out of his hands.

  "You've got lousy situational awareness, Yevgenii," he hissed. The name of the Keldara was embroidered in glow-letters on the back of his boonie-cap. "Stand down."

  "Kildar!" the boy whispered. "I never saw you!"

  "That's why I'm the instructor and you're the trainee, boy," Mike said, quietly.

  The Keldara forward of the trail had heard the byplay and slapped the shoulder of the Keldara in front of him, sending the signal up the line of troopers to halt for something to the rear.

  Mike handed the weapon back and stepped up along the line of crouched troopers, tapping them on the shoudler as he passed.

  "Piatras, how's it going. Ionis, ready to do a man's job tonight? Sergejus, keep your barrel down this time. Stephan, how's the baby?

  "McKenzie," Mike said when he got to the command group in the middle of the patrol. "Sawn. Let's get moving; they haven't stopped."

  Sawn nodded and tapped forward and back. He waited until he'd gotten responses from either direction, then got the team moving.

  They continued down the trail until they got to the stream and then moved off to the right through the woods, weaving in and out among the trees.

  As they approached the trail that was being used by the Chechens, Sawn gathered the group into a cigar-shaped perimeter and had them drop their rucksacks. Leaving two personnel behind to keep an eye on the rucks, he brought the team forward to the trail.

  He detailed two of the Keldara to move up the trail in the direction the Chechens should approach from, then laid out the rest of the team along the trail, about five meters into the woodline. At the far end he laid in a group across the trail, closing it in an "L" shape.

  The ambush was set up on the downhill side from the trail, which wasn't perfect, but it would probably do. They also didn't have any claymores with them, which wasn't great. Nor did they have heavy weapons; this training had been based on recon and light ambushes so the machine guns were back at the base. They did, however, have frag grenades. And the Chechens probably wouldn't have NODs.

  With no signal from the observers along the trail the Keldara started working on their positions. There was no time to dig real fighting positions but the Keldara rapidly scraped out shallow trenches, pushing the dirt up in small breastworks in front of them. The leaves they scraped off to the side. When they lay down in the trench they wrapped themselves in a ponchos lined with thermal blankets, then pulled the leaves back over themselves, covering themselves completely.

  Sawn's second, Dimant Ferani, followed behind, touching up the positions and ensuring that each position had minimal thermal output. The Chechens rarely used thermal imagery devices but it never hurt to be sure.

  Mike had scraped out his own hasty fighting position, wrapped and covered. Under the cover he slipped out a frag grenade and held it in his right hand with his weapon by his right side. Then he settled down to wait.

  The Keldara were as perfect as any group he'd ever met. From years of farming and hunting they had enormous patience and the ability to simply sit, or lie down in this case, for hours. They also tended to keep awake, which was a major benefit with
ambushes; most ambushers tended to drift off and start snoring. But the Keldara just ... waited, like expert hunters. He was again amazed by the absolute perfection of the group of rural farmers.

  The Chechens, however, were not nearly as good. He could hear them coming long before the signal from the overwatch position that the target was entering the zone. He could also smell them: a tinge of woodsmoke, BO and harsh cigarettes. The latter was so strong he was sure one or more of them was actually smoking.

  There was a series of clicks over the radio as Sawn signalled the team to prepare to engage. Mike could hear the sound of the mules' hooves on rocks and couldn't imagine that the normally vigilant animals didn't know the Keldara were there. However, Sawn had obviously chosen the downhill side for more than one reason. There was a current of air coming down the mountainside and it blew from the trail to the ambushers. That was keeping their scent from reaching the mules. As long as everyone was silent, they were golden.

  There was another series of faint clicks in his earphones and then a series of beeps. One, two, three ...

  Mike pulled the pin from the grenade and lifted himself to his knees, the leaves and poncho cascading away from him, then threw the grenade uphill into the mass of men and mules in front of him. With that done he ducked down into the hasty fighting position and flattened himself into the ground, as a series of sharp cracks filled the air with a hail of shrapnel.

  As soon as the last grenade had detonated he slid his SPR over the side of the small mound in front of him and began picking out targets. The Chechens had gone to ground fast, but they didn't have good cover along this section of the trail and if he couldn't directly target someone, one of the Keldara to the side could. AK rounds cracked overhead but he ignored them, sweeping his weapon back and forth in a search for targets.

  The mules complicated things, slightly. Some of them were down, kicking in pain from the riddling shrapnel. Others, however, had broken free and were running loose. One came barreling right over his position, stamping hard on his thigh as it passed.

  He'd picked out three targets and downed them when he heard Sawn's whistle for the team to sweep across the objective.

  He lifted himself up and kept the weapon at present as he stepped forward. There was a wounded tango on the ground, hit by shrapnel or a round in the leg, he wasn't sure which, with an AK on the ground next to him. Mike swept the UV light from his rifle flash on the tango, made an assessment that he wasn't a leader, and put a round through his head.

  He continued across the objective, checking the dead and wounded carefully, until he was well into the woods on the far side. He flipped the sight on the rifle to thermal imagery and swept it up the hillside, looking for hiding tangoes but didn't find any.

  Sawn's whistle signalled recall and Mike headed back down the hill to the trail, checking his sector for recovery items. Besides the mules, the surviving ones of which the Keldara were gathering up, he was looking for any intel items such as paperwork. There didn't seem to be much immediately obvious and he left off the search to go find Sawn and McKenzie.

  "We've got three prisoners and two somethings," McKenzie said as he approached.

  "Somethings?" Mike asked.

  "Two bints with the Chechens," the Scottish former SAS sergeant said in his thick brogue. "One with a grenade fragment in her side. Ivan's talking with them at the moment. I get the impression they weren't wives or such like."

  "Slaves," Ivan said, stepping up to the trainer's side. "They were picked up on farms over towards the Pankisi Gorge. That and the food on the mules. They weren't bought, the fucking black-asses raided and burned the farms."

  "Bloody hell," Mike muttered. "Orphans and damaged goods."

  "More lassies for your harem, lad," McKenzie grunted, humorously.

  "Raped and abused ladies make difficult harem girls," Mike pointed out, sighing. "What about the other prisoners?"

  "One looks like the leader of the convoy," McKenzie said. "The other two were hiding in the woods and put their hands up so fast nobody had the heart to shoot them."

  "Probably drivers," Mike said. "Postbattle cleanup time. I'm going to head down to the road and try to intercept the response team on the way up to intercept the trucks."

  "They might not be coming tonight, lad," McKenzie pointed out.

  "But they will eventually," the Kildar said.

  * * *

  Mike made it to the road just as the first vehicle of the reaction convoy rounded the nearest corner. He stepped out in the road and waved at it as it approached, hoping like hell they wouldn't either run him down or frag him.

  "Kildar," Ivar Makanee said as the vehicle rolled to a stop.

  "Need a ride to my Expedition if you please," Mike said. The vehicle was a Ford F-350 flare-side and he waved at the point leader to stay in his seat as he climbed in the back.

  "Keldara Base, this is Kildar," Mike said, settling into the load of weapons and ammo in the rear.

  * * *

  "Kildar, this is Keldara Base," Gildana said. It was past her time to be relieved but Vanner had kept her on the radio since she was fully "dialed in" on the situation. The truth was, he couldn't have pried her out of the seat.

  "I've linked up with Team Oleg point," the Kildar replied. "I'm going to head up to the roadblock and check out operations up there. Russell's with Team Padrek, correct?"

  Gildana looked at her ops screen and nodded to herself.

  "Correct, Kildar," she said, looking around the room. She'd put the call in on the announcement system since it was from the Kildar and she caught Colonel Nielson's eye, raising her eyebrows to see if he had anything he wanted to pass on. But the colonel just shook his head.

  "I'll head up there and hang around to see if anything happens right off," the Kildar continued. "Make sure that Padrek knows it's us coming up the road, please."

  "Roger, Kildar."

  "Kildar, out."

  She changed frequencies to Padrek by hitting the appropriate icon and took the system off announce.

  "Padrek, Keldara Base."

  "Padrek Five, go."

  "Kildar and Team Oleg are on the way, ETA five to seven minutes. Status?"

  "All clear so far," Padrek Five replied. That was Bori Mahona, a distant cousin, like most of the Keldara. He was a serious young man, more studious than most of the Keldara, and she could practically see his furrowed brow over the radio.

  "Kildar asks that you not fire on their vehicles," she added, twitting him slightly.

  "We're prepared for their arrival, Keldara Base," Bori replied tightly. "Anything else?"

  "Negative," she said, secretly happy to have pricked his seriousness. "Keldara Base, out."

  "How are you feeling, Gildana?" Vanner asked, sitting down in the station chair by her.

  "Good, sir," Gildana replied.

  "You need relief?" he asked.

  "No, sir," she said as the icon for Team Sawn started to flash. "Go Sawn."

  "If you flag out, tell me," Vanner said, sitting back.

  "Keldara Base, this is Sawn Five," Gavi Makanee said over the radio. Gavi was a first cousin, about her age and they'd been raised almost as brother and sister. She could see him now, short-cut red hair tousled by his boonie hat, camouflage paint on his face, probably crouched over a scrap of paper carefully doing it all "by the book."

  "Go Sawn Five," she said, bringing up the mission report screen.

  "Enemy KIA twenty-nine," Gavi said. "Enemy WIA one. Papa Whiskey three. Hotel two. Friendly KIA, zero. Friendly WIA, two, non-critical, say again, non-critical. Ammunition, green. Supplies, green. Large quantity of small arms, food and some contraband. Twelve pack animals functional. Caching or destroying immovable material and moving to road for pickup."

  "Roger, Sawn Five," Gildana said, bringing up another screen and dispatching a group of vehicles to go pick up Team Sawn.

  * * *

  "Hey, Padrek," Mike said as he rolled off the back of the truck.

  "
Kildar," the team leader said, ducking his head. "Would you like to take a look at our positions?"

  Mike glanced at the team's trainer and then shook his head.

  "This is your game, Padrek," Mike said. "The next time you're going to have to do it all on your own, so you might as well start now. I'm just another shooter on this one."

  "Yes, Kildar," the leader said, swallowing nervously. "I've laid in positions on both sides of the road and prepared a tree for a roadblock. I'll get with Oleg and get his vehicles in position to reinforce the block."

  "Go for it," Mike said, wandering to the roadside with a wave. He hunkered down on a rock, dropped his ruck and stretched his shoulders. To think a few hours ago he was screwing the hell out of a young redhead. What the hell was he doing here?

  A couple of the farm trucks were placed to block the road while the two teams began cutting trees to make negotiable S curves that would slow vehicles approaching the position. A forward position was also under construction, the "chicken" pit where a single soldier would be placed to order vehicles into the roadblock.

  Meanwhile, the heavy weapons gunners of Team Oleg were building positions along the roadside. If anyone tried to force the block, the Keldera would catch them with raking fire as they tried to negotiate the S cover obstacles.

  Last, the drivers of the three remaining Team Oleg vehicles waited in place in case anyone passed them. They could pursue or be used as a secondary blocking point.

  Mike's big worry was truck bombs. The defenses were spread out but one truck bomb could cut a swath through the core of the Keldara families. Which would put a pretty large black mark on the record of the Kildar.

  Which he wasn't going to fix by worrying about it.

  "I've redeployed the group," McKenzie said, coming over to his position in the trees and dropping his ruck. "I'm moving Sawn up forward to close the block if anybody tries to run and putting Oleg's boys on the block itself."

  "Works," Mike said. "Get the spare vehicles out of sight and if they get a solid block in place move the ones blocking the road."

  "Will do," McKenzie said. "You really expect them soon?"